Crime

Take a good look at the guy shown here. Police said today they are looking for him in connection with the beating and robbery of a 75-year-old woman earlier this week. The story was just posted (link) on our site. Do you know who this guy is? Contact the Fremont Police Department, 510-790-6900.

The Alameda County Coroner’s Bureau this afternoon identified the man who died this morning in a crash near Interstate 880 and Auto Mall Parkway in Fremont as Wayne James Johansen, 25, of Hayward.

Officials also noted that the cause of death was multiple traumatic injuries, which rules out the notion that Johansen may have drowned after his car rolled and landed upside down in a standing pool of water on the road side.

UPDATE: 12:15 P.M. (2/24) – Two people have been arrested and a third is now being sought in this case. Should have more details later today, but it looks like this thing stems from a fight between two brothers.

UPDATE: 4 P.M. (2/23) – All lanes of Stevenson Boulevard are now being re-opened. However, there are no further details of the shooting.

UPDATE: 2:50 p.m.(2/23) — Looks like no one was hit by gunfire, but a car was shot up.

Original: Still seeking details on this case, but police have shut down westbound Stevenson Boulevard between Fremont Boulevard and Besco Drive as they investigate a shooting in the area. It’s unclear at this point exactly what happened, but it looks like at least three shots were fired and there was some sort of crash; still not sure if anyone was hurt. Stay tuned …

A small amount of cash was stolen early Saturday morning from Coffee Plus at 4165 Cushing Parkway after a burglar or burglars smashed the rear glass door. There have also been window smash burglaries in Irvington and on the corner of Paseo Padre and Driscoll in recent weeks.

Also Saturday, a resident on Sterne Place called police at 3:30 a.m. to report that a blue Honda Accord had just crashed into her front yard. Two males ran out of the car before police arrived. The car was registered out of Union City.

And on Sunday, a woman was walking with her boyfriend near the Village Green Apartments when her ex-boyfriend of two years ago showed up. Seeing his former sweetheart with her new man made him so mad that he told her, “I’ll shoot him in the (bleeping) face.” She called police, who came by and arrested the guy and his buddy, neither of whom had a gun.

When officers arrived, they learned that family members had been engaged in a dispute over the use of a vehicle. One of the parties, a 48 year old Newark man, brandished a knife.

After using the knife to cut an adult female family member, he brandished it and threatened the others. Another adult family member stopped the attack by firing a handgun at the man. The man sustained non-life threatening injuries from the single gunshot and was treated at an area hospital. The adult female victim sustained a non-life threatening injury and also received medical care.

The incident was isolated to that specific residence and the investigation is still in progress, but the investigation will likely result in criminal charges being requested.

Manuel Castro, 61, of Newark is being arraigned today on two counts of lewd acts against a child, Newark police wrote in a press statement. Castro, who works as a janitor at Schilling Elementary School, is accused of using candy to lure a nine-year-old girl away from view of other children and adults where, according to Newark police, he then touched her inappropriately. Police wrote that this happened twice, once this month and once in December.

The girl participated in an after school program at Schilling, where the incidents are alledged to have occurred, Newark police wrote.

Castro was booked into Santa Rita Jail Tuesday, police wrote. His bail was set at $120,000.

Police don’t think there are other victims.

We’ll have a full story about this in tomorrow’s paper.

Meanwhile, any person with information concerning this incident should contact Sergeant David Parks of the Newark Police Department at (510) 578-4247. Information can also be left anonymously on the “Silent Witness” hotline at 510-578-4000, extension 500.

A young woman was doing laundry in the Parkwood Plaza Apartment Complex at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday afternoon when a man grabbed her around the waist and placed his hand over her mouth. The girl struggled free and started screaming. Her relatives quickly rushed to her aid and chased the guy out of the apartment complex at 3400 Country Drive before alerting police.

The cops showed up around 2 p.m., but couldn’t find him. They did make this composite sketch of the man, who is described as a tall, slender Asian, about 30-years-old with shoulder length brown hair. He was wearing a blue and white horizontal striped polo shirt and long blue-jeans shorts.

Also yesterday four guys, one of whom was carrying a black revolver, robbed a lone male in the 38600 block of Lexington Street. They took his wallet and ran away.

We’ll be doing a lot more routine cop stuff on the blog for the next month. These entries will probably have even more spelling and grammar issues than my usual posts.

There was a sort-of robbery of may favorite gas station (The ARCO at Stevenson and Blacow, thanks lifer) early Friday morning. Two guys entered the AM/PM shop. One bought a 12-pack of beer. The other, who was sporting a ponytail, picked out some beer for himself, went to the register and asked for a pack of cigarettes as well as all the money from the safe and the register.

The clerk gave him the cigarettes, but nothing more. The guy’s buddy apologized for his friend’s behavior and offered to pay for the booze and smokes, but somehow he didn’t end up doing it. They left in a Chevy Suburban that had fender flares.

On Saturday,

A Mountain Mikes Pizza deliver driver was confronted at the corner of Grimmer and Paseo Padre by a guy who made like he had a gun. The deliver guy ended up losing a small amount of cash, and the robber fled on foot.

Also Saturday, four teens confronted someone and relieved him/her of his/her iPod. That was at Cloverleaf Bowl.

Around Nicolet Avenue and Pizarro Drive, a resident confronted a 30-something-year-old guy who was trying to burglarize the victim’s parked car. The perp ran away.

Sunday:

At around 2 a.m. two police officers on patrol noticed that the fire alarm had sounded at Kennedy High School. They found a 17-year-old leaving the campus, while inside they found that eight fire extinguishers had been randomly sprayed and the locker room to the mini-gym had been ransacked. Police arrested the kid the found outside the campus for entering the building with the intent to commit a felony.

A former gang task force officer now working patrol spotted a teenager that looked familiar to him walking on Mission View Drive. When the kid starting fiddling with something around his ankle, the officer ordered him to stop, but the kid took off. The officer chased after him and caught the kid as he was trying to climb someone’s fence on the 4000 block of Leslie Street. Turned out the kid had a Smith and Wesson 22 caliber revolver and 30 bullets inside a beef jerky container. The jerky teen was sent to Juvy on charges of felony possesion of a fire arm and resisting arrests. The charges come with gang enhancements.

It doesn’t seem like Fremont police were too busy yesterday. The day’s top crime was a group of kids stealing a motorized chair from the Hub. An officer spotted them on Richmond Avenue. They ran away, but the cops caught them. One was taken into custody, the others were determined not to be directly involved. The chair apparently wasn’t so much a wheelchair as it was a chair for a really large person who’s too big to get around

The day’s number two crime occurred at Central Avenue and Farwell Drive. It was there that occupants in a Mazda MPV fired shots from an air soft gun at another car hitting a passenger. The victim called 911, and followed the Mazda to Newark. A Fremont sergeant spotted the car, pulled it over, detained the six occupants and recovered two air soft pistols from the car

UPDATE (4:29 p.m.) The gunman was a fifty-something year-old white guy. I saw him get loaded into an ambulance. Don’t know if he was going to jail or a hospital. He fired a single round through his apartment wall shortly before noon. Cops came over, he wouldn’t come out. Cops evacuated people and negotiated with him. And then he surrendered. No one was hurt.

UPDATE (3:40 p.m.): The gunman has surrendered. Things are winding down at the scene.

UPDATE (1:38 p.m.): Turns out no one got shot, but the suspected gunman is holed up in his apartment and refusing to come out. It’s a standoff between him and police right now.

(ORIGINAL ENTRY): This one sounds more serious. It’s at the Glenhaven Savoy Apartments in North Fremont. I’ll be heading over there. Sounds like the shooter had a lot of guns registered to him, and police are now evacuating nearby apartments.